


Quiet Little Mountain Town

by apollos



Category: South Park
Genre: F/M, M/M, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of South Park fics, mostly from Tumblr, that are too weak to stand on their own. Lots of Style and Kendy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Afterbirth

**Author's Note:**

> Since ao3 doesn't allow chapter summaries for first chapter, here's the chapter summary for the first chapter:
> 
> Afterbirth. Kenny/Wendy. Written in response to the prompt "I was catcalled while pregnant." Warnings for pregnancy, rape (no rape in the story but it’s discussed), drugs and death.

She no longer walked, she waddled. She hated it, too; she’d been so slim throughout the beginning of her pregnancy, so slim she hadn’t even noticed she was pregnant, and by the time she did it was too late to abort. Then, in her last few months, she ballooned up to the size of a whale. She was pretty sure this was not normal in the medical world, but extensive online research only told her that all women’s bodies responded to pregnancy differently, and her doctor told her the same thing, so she sucked it up and went maternity clothes shopping with Bebe. Bebe was also very pregnant, but much more happily, her and a man she had met in college’s fetus swimming inside of her.

Wendy’s baby was the result of an unfortunate one-night stand with Cartman. She tried not to think about it. She was going to adopt it out, when she had it; the thought made her feel like a breeder in some dystopian future. She had been on the pill and everything, having regular sex with her boyfriend (also a guy she met in college.) The one-night stand destroyed, well, _everything_  in Wendy’s life, from her relationship to her own body, as Cartman was prone to do.

But here she was, waddling down South Park’s main street, a shopping bag full of vitamins, diapers and chocolates (she was feeling miserable today) in her hand. She hadn’t needed to go out of the house, didn’t even need diapers, but it was better than suffocating inside her apartment. She’d been living with her boyfriend in Denver the night she got knocked up by Cartman, who was there on business. Then her boyfriend had rudely kicked her out six months later (which, at present, was two months ago) and she’d been forced to move back to South Park. She’d been forced to quit her job. All for this thing inside of her.

And now somebody was catcalling her. Wendy was ready for murder.

At least until she saw the person doing the catcalling on the other side of the street: Kenny McCormick. She hadn’t seen Kenny while she’d been back in South Park, hadn’t seen him in years, but she heard from Stan and Kyle that he’d moved to California, where he ran a successful drive-through marijuana joint. It was legal to smoke it and legal to drive while high there. She had also heard that the Puff ‘n’ Go, as it was called, had opened up several stores nationwide. Wendy had been advocate for the legalization of marijuana, but this wasn’t exactly what she had in mind. She was a little dumbstruck to see Kenny—he no longer looked, well,  _poor_ , but like the young owner of a successful company, filled out with broad shoulders, a collared shirt and a sensible haircut. In high school, he’d been a skinny twig of a boy with a weird, half-shaved mullet thing going on.

Looking both ways, she waddled over to meet Kenny on the opposite side of the street. “Why the fuck are you catcalling me?” she asked.

“To get your attention.” Kenny had the same smile, though, a vague lecherous tint to it.

“That’s not how you get a woman’s attention. It’s sexist and rude.”

“Sorry.” He seemed—genuine, about the apology. Strange. “But, hey, uh. Let’s catch up?” He also seemed genuine about this, looking down at her weirdly shyly.

Wendy considered her options, then realized something. The combination of diapers, chocolate and vitamins was heavy, and she was admittedly lonely. All of her old friends were too busy or avoided her, now. “Sure. Could you carry these back to my apartment?” She held the shopping bag out to him like she would hold the neck of a dead chicken.

Kenny nodded and took it from her. She watched the muscles in his arms move and felt amazed by the difference; it was like he multiplied himself and joined the two Kennys together, a reverse mitosis. He looked at her and she realized he was waiting for her to pick a direction, so she headed in the way of her apartment and he fell in step beside her.

A few steps in, Kenny said, “I don’t want to make this awkward, so. I know Cartman’s the father.”

Wendy groaned. She hadn’t told anybody, but Cartman had told everybody, since she had felt it the ethical thing to do to alert him when she found out she was pregnant.

Kenny was still talking, though. “And, uh, Wendy. It’s been bothering me and I asked Stan about it but I don’t know, Stan might have lied, look, what I’m trying to ask is—” Wendy looks to see Kenny had turned a deep shade of red. Did he even blush back in high school? “Did you…was it…consensual?”

“Are you asking me if I was  _raped_?” Wendy stopped. They were still in  _town_  town, and she spoke too loudly, people looking at her. “By  _Eric fucking Cartman_?”

Kenny’s hands flew up. “Look, I just know what he’s capable of, okay! And I was so worried! I didn’t want to just call you up and be like, hey?”

Wendy pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “I hate South Park,” she said, while Kenny said, “You look like Stan.” Then Wendy said: “Kenny. I appreciate your concern, but I’m not a saint. I make mistakes, too.”

It was Kenny’s turn to sigh. They started walking again, awkwardness buzzing around them. Wendy was overcome then with the desire to tell Kenny everything, how she’d decided to have sex with  _Cartman_ , how she’d ruined her own life at her own hand, how she hated this baby inside of her. How she wished she’d shown earlier. How she still wondered if she could’ve kept it a secret from her ex, whom she thought she was going to marry. She didn’t think she could have; she started crying there on the street, alarming Kenny, who stopped and put his hands on her shoulders and turned her towards him.

“It’s the hormones,” she offered, weakly. They were near her apartment now. The bag of things she had bought swung against her arm, hanging off of Kenny’s wrist;  _why_  did she buy the diapers? She wanted to adopt the baby out immediately, she had the couple picked out and everything, they were lovely people and now she was crying harder.

“Wendy,” Kenny said, so softly. And then he led the way; her apartment building was the only one remotely close to where they were.

They took the elevator because Wendy knew she wouldn’t make it up to her stairs, and by then she had stopped crying. Kenny was rubbing her lower back as if by instinct, and didn’t stop even when she forced her key in the lock and entered her apartment. She was glad it was clean, though it was always clean, Wendy being a clean person. Kenny, as though on autopilot, walked to the kitchen and put the bag on the counter. Then he sat down on her couch, Wendy following suit.

“Did Stan tell you everything?” Wendy asked, the urge to reveal it all still there.

Kenny shook his head. “Cartman told me himself. I, uh—I don’t stay in touch with these people much. My life is pretty much in California. I’m just in town to see about opening up a shop here and see my family.”

“Alright,” Wendy said, very impressed with how grown up he was sounding. It was silly—they were both thirty. Of course he was grown up. She was, too, even if she was currently unemployed and pregnant with a child she didn’t want like a wronged teenager. “Well, do you want to know?”

“If you want to tell me, I’ll listen.”

So Wendy told him the whole embarrassing truth. Cartman ran an investment capital company in New York, having gone to college in the Northeast and stayed there. She hadn’t spoken to him in years, not since they graduated high school, but she recognized him at once when she saw in him a coffee shop she always went to before going to her office. He looked the same; still big and fat, cheeks pink and hair plastered to his head in an unappealing way. He was unappealing. He was the opposite of sexually desirable.

“But?” Kenny said at this point, interrupting Wendy going on and on about how ugly she found Cartman.

“But, I don’t know, we started talking in line. And then he asked me to meet up for drinks after both our workdays were done and I said yes.” She had called her ex and told him she was staying late at work, and it was then that she knew she was going to cheat. She had walked into the bar with that in her mind:  _I am going to have sex with Eric Cartman._  And they did; after drinks, which was awkward and tense with small talk leading to small arguments, they went back to Cartman’s hotel and had gross, sloppy sex.

“It wasn’t even good sex?” Kenny asked, incredulous and on the verge of laughter.

“It wasn’t even good sex,” Wendy moaned in agreement. Her baby kicked then, and she grabbed Kenny’s wrist to put his hand on her stomach. “See, the thing agrees. Anyway, I was on the pill, and we used a condom. That’s two layers of protection. But I guess the universe hates me, or Cartman’s sperm are just so full of hatred they burrowed out of that condom, I don’t know. I’m pregnant.” It was a laughably dumb thing to say; the baby was still kicking against Kenny’s hand, responding to Wendy’s voice.

“He probably poked holes in the condom.” Kenny was not joking; he was serious, his hand still on her stomach, Wendy’s still on his wrist, their eyes locked. “You’re going to at least force him to pay child support, right?”

“What, no, I’m not keeping this thing.” Wendy laughed. “I already found a couple to adopt it out to. The wife is trans, so they can’t have biological children of their own. They live in Connecticut but they’ve flown out here a few times. Lovely people. I hope it’ll be happy.” She sincerely did, she thought. She just didn’t want it to be happy with her.

“You don’t know the sex?” Kenny furrowed his brow and rubbed her belly as if he could tell it through some spiritual means. “You keep saying  _it_ , or  _this thing_. You kind of make the baby sound like a tumor.”

“Do you know how terrible it is not to have agency over your own body?” Wendy asked, and now she was serious, on the verge of tears again. “To have it betray you? I didn’t even know I was pregnant until it was too late to abort. I feel like a breeder. I didn’t even want children, Kenny! I wanted to be a successful civil rights lawyer, and I lost my job as a paralegal because of this! Do you know what it’s like not to have your mind and your body match up?”

To her surprise, Kenny grabbed at her. Took her into his arms and let her cry against his chest. She’d done this to Stan, so many times, Kyle watching judgingly from a distance. She’d done this with her mother, her father. But with Kenny, something slid and clicked, like it had with her ex. Like it hadn’t with Cartman. And when Kenny said, “Yes, I do know,” she cried harder.

“How could you know?” She asked, pulling away from him and wiping away her tears. She’d never been a crier until the pregnancy and a blush rose to her cheeks. “How could you know what it’s like to be pregnant against your will?”

“I don’t know that,” Kenny admitted. His thumb was rubbing circles on her upper arms. “But I know what it’s like not to have agency over your body. Nobody believes me, and you’re going to forget this as soon as I say it, but it’s physically impossible for me to die. I just come back to life. I died a week ago and woke up in my parents’ house for the first time in decades. It upset my girlfriend, so I came up with this lie that I had a family emergency. And I just stayed here because, well, I hadn’t seen them in a while, and it  _would_  be a good thing to bring Puff ‘n’ Go to South Park. Stan and Kyle alone would make me back half my money.”

“How come you can’t die?” Wendy furrowed her brow. “Are you sampling your own product a bit too much, Kenny?”

Kenny looked at her like she was a ghost, and Wendy felt like one, too. But, hey—if she winded up back in South Park at thirty pregnant with Cartman’s child, it made sense that Kenny couldn’t die, because nothing made sense at all these days. And if he was lying (which he was, because this was physically impossible), it couldn’t harm him to humor him. She knew he looked too good, acted too well, for some high school craziness  _not_  to cling to him somewhat.

“My parents joined a cult,” Kenny said, slowly. “You—you believe me?”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“If I killed myself, do you think you would remember?”

“Kenny!” Wendy would’ve stood up in alarm if she was capable of doing that in her present state. “Kenny, don’t talk like that!”

Kenny sighed and relaxed back on her couch. “It’s not worth upsetting you,” he mumbled.

But Wendy remembered this conversation, flipping it over in her mind and examining it from all angles to try and figure out what he meant. Some feeling persisted that they were kindred souls, that Kenny  _did_  somehow know what she was feeling, and she found herself confiding in him about the pregnancy. He stayed in South Park with her, insisting that he wasn’t needed at home in California, that he’d been planning to break up with his girlfriend anyway. And when she had the baby, when she expelled the thing from her and found out it was a boy that the couple from Connecticut would name themselves, Kenny was beside her, holding her hand.

The nurses asked her if she wanted to hold the baby; Wendy shocked them by saying no and directing them to bring it to the couple, who had gone outside, the actual sight of childbirth painful for them.

Left somewhat alone with Kenny and waiting on the afterbirth, Wendy said, “I hope he turns out alright. I hope he understands. I hope—well, I hope he doesn’t hate me.”

“Everybody has their tragedies, Wendy,” Kenny said, and maybe it was the drugs, but Wendy thought it to be the most profound thing she’d ever heard anybody say.

And later, when Wendy woke up in her hospital room, Kenny was still with her. He was holding her hand, actually, rubbing circles across the back of it like he had the day they reunited. Thinking of that, Wendy remembered the conversation they’d had; how they’d talked about agency, about death. “Kenny,” she said, her voice still clogged with sleepiness, “you haven’t died.”

“No,” Kenny said. “Not since I’ve been back.”

“That’s good.” Wendy’s eyes were still closed. “The baby’s gone, Kenny. It’s gone. I have my body back.” That wasn’t true; she’d have to claw to get her body back to the state she’d been in before the pregnancy. And the bloating would linger. But she would have it back, she would. “So you can’t die.”

“Does this mean you believe me?” Wendy opened her eyes to see Kenny’s eyes wide again, and in that moment she finally recognized the Kenny from her childhood. The Kenny who kept his face covered, whose eyes only peeked through his hood, whose eyes emitted all of his emotion to the world. Wendy was still a bit drugged up, she thought, as she placed a hand against the side of Kenny’s face.

“I don’t know,” she said, truthfully. “But I know what it’s like. Not to have agency. It’s the most terrible thing. Poor us.”

Kenny put his hand over hers. “No,” he said. “Not poor us.” And Wendy understood.

Five years later, Wendy is still living in South Park. The couple she adopted the kid out to named him Weston, in honor of her, and they send regular pictures. Wendy has met him twice; the first time with Kenny when Weston was two, the second time without Kenny last summer for his fifth birthday. He resembles Cartman, but in a sweet, not fat way, pink cheeks and brown hair. She knows he is happy and loved, and she is grateful for that.

Five years later, Wendy is a civil rights lawyer that makes a regular commute to Denver. She hasn’t seen Cartman again. The couple respects her choice not to get him involved in Weston’s life. He emails Kenny sometimes to brag to him about his own wealth, but Kenny brushes it off, because he (alongside Wendy, as five years later they’re married) is way richer than Cartman is. There’s been an embezzlement scandal; he’s under investigation by the law, revealing he actually has a small army of bastard children, which Kenny inssts must be part of some nefarious scheme.

Five years later, Kenny still has not died and Wendy is thinking about children.


	2. Love and Love and Happy Afternoons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan/Kyle. Self-evident.

Mutual fever wakes them in the dead of night. It is so hot under the covers, breath and body heat mingling, knees sand foreheads shoved up against each other, yet so cold outside, below zero, snow falling, falling, falling. That is how they feel when they awake—jerked out of a dream and crashing into each other. They laugh when they see the fear in each other’s eyes and move even closer, yearning for the ultimate togetherness, wishing they could just meld their souls back together already and become the original human, the one with four arms, four legs and two faces that Plato spoke of. The closest to this concept they can come to is when they are coming, connected in beautiful, lewd ways.

Trembling eyelashes, fine and red, sprouting like springtime blossoms from pale, veiny, thin skin. They are touched, a rough fingertip sliding over, heat. They are shivering with the knowledge that if they were to shred their covers and expose their naked bodies they would freeze into oblivion. They are shivering with being so close but never close enough. When they were children, too young to remember, they would try, and they would cry when their parents would pull them apart, not understanding. All they wanted—all they want—somehow. Any way. Aching and shivering and trembling for it.

Compromise. Kyle is the first to pull apart but Stan is the one to climb on top. Those eyelashes; he touches them again, wiping away the tears that are forming at the corners of the eyes already. This is new and raw, this development, a recent discovery, and every time feels like the first and the last when they slide together like this. When and where melts away, slowly, until they are left in a void of now, until every part of skin that can touch is touching. It is silent, silent enough that blood is rushing in their ears, loud as their heartbeats and the swallows that get stuck in their parched throats. They cannot distinguish whose sweat is whose; it doesn’t matter, not now. Completeness.

“All I ever needed,” one of them is mumbling into the other’s skin. Redness bubbles up under a surface with indiscriminate freckles thrown about; bangs are swinging into eyes that deserve jewel-toned monikers. “I could write songs about you.”

Experiences live in memory as a recollection of singular things reduced into the five senses: touch, taste, sight, smell, hearing. Smell is the strongest, semen and sweat and, vaguely, snow. Heat and heartbeats. Gooseflesh and giggling. Slow, patient thrusts, mutual understanding, symbiosis. Two as one. Concepts and philosophy and they are living it.

Sometimes things are perfect.

So hot, still, after, and sticky and uncomfortable now, yet sleep sticks a flag into their bodies and lays claim. Morning will come; no need to worry. Snow will cease. They will die and be reunited. For now they are together the best that they can be.


	3. A Hot and Humid Afternoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan/Kyle watersports porn. Also Kyle is a murderer. That's about it.

Since moving to Miami, where Kyle works with Cuban relations at such a secretive level that he cannot talk about it with Stan and where Stan works as a part-time yoga instructor, Stan has not acclimated to the heat. A mountain boy born and raised, sticky humidity that lasts all day, every day, year-round, is as foreign as the palm trees and Spanish signs on every other street. Besides, they are in Coral Gables, safe from everything but the occasional rowdy college student. It was all for Kyle, anyway, whom Stan would follow to the literal ends of the Earth, South and North Pole, whom he would live (probably more) happily as an eskimo for, whom he would help hide a body (and has, but that’s a story for another day.)

So when Kyle comes home from work, adjusting his tie around his neck in a way that makes Stan want to slam him against the table and ravish him, and says, “Stan, I need to confess something,” with his cheeks flushing red, Stan’s heart drops to his feet.

“Yes?” Stan asks. There’s a cool washcloth across his neck, water and sweat sliding down the back of his form-fitting, athletic tank top. He’s just taught an evening yoga class to a bunch of working moms and college girls and has been cooling off in their expansive wood-paneled kitchen under the ceiling fan.

Kyle chews on one of his cheeks, forming a visible ravine, and taps his foot. “I, uh. Well.” More chewing and tapping. Then he stops both and shouts: “I want you to piss on me!”

There are a few beats of silence in which the ceiling fan provides the only noise in the room, around and around, and Stan’s head spins with it. Then he says, almost morosely, “I thought you hated pee.”

“That’s the thing,” Kyle says, fire back in his eyes, coming over to rest both hands on the table Stan is sat at and leaning forward. He looks like he’s making plans of world domination, or at the very least giving a very heated speech at a business meeting. “When I had that, ah—incident—the other day, I came to a realization. I don’t  _hate_  pee. I am  _aroused_  by pee. My rationality and younger self had been interpreting it all wrong.”

Stan’s cock grows hard (unfortunately?) at Kyle’s mention of his  _incident_. It had happened last week, Stan witness to it all. Since Kyle’s kidney troubles as a child, he had the occasional problem holding his bladder. It hadn’t escalated to a full-out wetting as far as Stan knew except for that one time: they were on the road to Tallahassee for some state government meeting Kyle had to attend, about which he was apparently very nervous, drinking coffee and water in excess to try to calm himself down. On a long stretch of highway, surrounded by other vehicles, Kyle had lost control, crying hot tears of shame that Stan found dreadfully arousing. He had kept telling Kyle that it was okay, that everybody had accidents sometimes, that he could change into his other pair of slacks (Kyle was always prepared and had packed three different pairs of slacks, four shirts, an extra pair of socks and two pairs of shoes, in addition to his overnight bag for the hotel, in case of emergency) as soon as they found a rest stop, all the while with a raging, confusing and angering hard-on that persisted as he cleaned the passenger seat of his car while Kyle sulked by the vending machines.

And now here Kyle was, admitting that he, too, had found the incident arousing. “Really?” Stan asks, dumbstruck.

“Really,” Kyle says. He rips the tie off his neck and runs a hand through his hair. “So are you down or not?”

Stan licks his lips. “Yeah,” he says, grinning.

Now it’s Kyle’s turn to exclaim, “Really!”

“It’s my turn to confess.” Stan takes the towel from around his neck, though he has found the sensation of the water down his back more and more sensual as the conversation has progressed. “I got super hard during the, uh. Incident. Dude. It was bad.”

Kyle’s lips split into a smile. He rushes around the table, which would be silly if Stan wasn’t hard as rocks, and deposits himself in Stan’s lap. He kisses his neck, his face, everything, wiggling his ass gladly and greedily on Stan’s erection. “So you’ll agree to try it,” Kyle is saying; Stan makes himself pay attention. “Right now?” Kyle cranes back.

“Sure. But I can’t pee when I’m hard like this.”

“Oh, yes, hmm.” Kyle then gets out of Stan’s lap and positions himself under the table, working to unroll Stan’s yoga tights. If somebody were to look through their windows—which Stan has left open, yearning for the smell of his freshly cut lawn and the breeze that carries it to circulate through the house—they would not be able to see Kyle. Stan finds that nice, comforting, even, as if he is somehow protecting Kyle while Kyle laps and sucks and hums happily below. But Stan is not thinking about this when he comes; Stan is thinking about what is to come, about drenching Kyle in his own urine, and how  _badly_  he would like to get to that, already.

Kyle swallows and wipes the back of his mouth as he comes up through Stan’s legs, both his hands on Stan’s naked thighs. “We should do it in the bathroom,” Kyle is saying. Stan has always admired Kyle’s ability to maintain a level head, even while sucking dick; Stan is foggy-brained and suggestable right now, and so he follows Kyle upstairs to their master bathroom, arousal in the mental sense if not the physical seeping back into his body and reenergizing him.

“Shit!” Kyle says when they’re in the bathroom, standing and looking at each other. “I forgot to ask. Do you even need to, you know, go?”

Stan considers it. “Yeah,” he says. He had drank a lot after coming home from yoga; he’s a big believer in hydration and the necessity of water in staying healthy. He pushes down his athletic pants, which have built-in underwear, revealing his cock. Kyle nods, his lips between his teeth.

"So I think we should start in the bath tub,” Kyle says, already moving in that direction. “Since there will be easy clean-up opportunities. As we get more comfortable with it, we can move elsewhere. But for now here is good.” Kyle kneels down in what Stan thinks of as a blowjob position. “And—on my face, in my hair, on my clothes—please.” He closes his eyes.

Stan takes his cock in his hand. It’s difficult at first, trying to coax his piss out of himself, and when it sprays—directly into Kyle’s face—it’s a shock to them both. Kyle yelps, his mouth opening and Stan, unable to stop himself, pisses straight into it. Kyle sticks his tongue out, but he doesn’t swallow, causing the liquid to dribble down his chin. Stan groans and directs his stream up, into Kyle’s hair, watches as it tames the curl and mats them down. He’s getting hard again, his stream drying up, and he only manages to wet Kyle’s collar and a little bit of his exposed chest. Kyle’s eyes are still closed, his eyelashes wet, and Stan is yearning to press him up against the wall of the shower and fuck him.

“Wow,” Kyle says after a beat in which Stan rubs his dick to this sight, “that was. Spectacular.”

“Yeah,” Stan agrees, breathily. “Get up.”

Kyle complies. Stan steps into the tub, coming to wrap his arms around Kyle and kiss him hard, tasting the salt of his own urine on Kyle’s lips. It’s sort of gross but not unwelcome; Stan snakes his hand down and takes Kyle and his cocks’ in his hand, rubbing them in conjunction. They’re both moaning, breathing heavily, precum and piss splattering their bodies. Kyle comes first, jumping off like a rifle, and something occurs to Stan. “Piss on me,” he begs, gripping Kyle’s softening cock, “piss on me, please, Kyle, just let go.”

“I can’t,” Kyle sobs, tilting his chin upwards, baring his neck. Stan bites into it.

“Yes you can.” Stan moves his hand above, finding roughly where he thinks Kyle’s bladder should be, and presses down on it. “Think about how good it will be. Just. Letting go.”

There’s a handful of still moments, Stan’s teeth hovering on Kyle’s neck, his soft dick resting in Kyle’s head, Kyle making little breathy noises, and then Stan feels it: a growing wetness, a stream travelling down with their bodies acting as respective storms, and that’s all Stan needs to come, too. He bites down on Kyle’s neck as he does it, a vague sense of vampirism springing to mind and lost in the pleasure, his other hand knotting in Kyle’s close-trimmed curls, the ones on his head. Stan cannot bear to look down—he pinches his eyes shut and collapses against Kyle.

They shower together, slowly coming back to life, giggly and nervous. They can’t quite catch the other’s eye—can’t quite believe what they’ve just done. It’s Kyle that brings it up first, leaning against the wall of the shower with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at Stan with piercing eyes.

“We should do that again,” he says.

“Yeah.” Stan would nod, but his head is tipped under the shower, rinsing lather from his hair. “It was, uh, neat.”

“Neat,” Kyle says, with something between a laugh and a scoff. “I’ve been fantasizing about it for a week and all you can say is neat?”

Stan lifts his head from the water and shrugs. “It’s just kind of weird,” he confesses.

Kyle steps towards him, off the shower wall, a vision in nudity. A god, maybe. Something that inspires Stan to paint. His thoughts are always a bit muddled regarding Kyle post-orgasm, but Kyle is an invitation, and Stan folds him into his arms. “It’s us,” Kyle is saying, “nothing is weird between us,” and Stan is inclined to agree, holding Kyle close, thinking about the time they’d gone out to the Everglades with a corpse and a shovel. It’s really not the most romantic of thoughts—maybe Stan should get down on one knee and proposed, now that they’ve marked each other as theirs in the most primal of ways—but it’s suiting. This is Kyle, whom he would help bury a body, whom he would follows to the end of the Earth, whom he would piss on and be pissed on by, if asked.


	4. The Fifty States of Denial

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan/Kyle. Stan is diagnosed with liver cancer.

The crinkling sound of the sanitary paper underneath Stan’s ass irritates him. It’s cliché and unnecessary; Stan’s back teeth grind against each other; no amount of patting of his thigh from Kyle can help. His knuckles are white on the examining table. He’s thinking about his daughter off at college, what she’s doing right now, the blissful ignorance that comes with separating yourself from your family.

“It’s going to be okay,” Kyle is saying. He’s pulled the chair in the room up to Stan’s side. From this angle Stan can see the gray in his hair. “Even if—” Stan had wanted to silence him, but Kyle does it himself, a swallow sticking in his throat.

There’s another five minutes of awkward, annoying quiet before the doctor comes in.

She wastes no times on pleasantries—Stan likes that. He’s always hated small talk from somebody that’s doing him a (dis?)service. “After reviewing the evidence,” she says, looking through thin glasses at a chart, “I am sorry to say, sir, but it’s liver cancer.”

At first it’s like Stan has just jammed in his head in a bowl of molasses, his ears clogged, his eyes shut and his world slowing, confused.  _Liver cancer_  are words that no longer make sense, independently and together, and the only thing he can hear through the fog is Kyle saying, “But he’s been sober for twenty years.”

The doctor sighs. Her voice swims to Stan as well, sounding faint, as if it’d been struggling against a strong current. “The combination of a genetic predisposition to alcoholism, liver problems, liver cancer and the fact that he did participate in heavy drinking in his youth—well. It’s not a good mix.” There’s a sound of a creaking chair, which is also annoying to Stan, but he’s seemed to gone blind in the molasses. “I’m so sorry, Stan. Kyle.”

Kyle’s hand is gripping Stan’s thigh like they’re on an airplane going through turbulence and twelve and he’s scared.

Stan is stuck.

“We have to discuss treatment options,” the doctor is saying. “Or—would you like a moment alone?”

_Would you like a moment alone_? Always, always, always. Kyle must’ve nodded, since there’s sounds of shoes scuffling across the floor and a door closing, shaking the blindness from Stan’s eyes. He watches as Kyle leaps into the examining table with him, paper shredding, a nobility and youthfulness in Kyle that Stan hasn’t seen in years. His daughter comes to mind, and that is when the tears start to collect in his eyes, because this is real and she’s off at college a thousand miles away, blissful and ignorant and  _gone_.

“Stan!” Kyle says. His voice sounds so small. His face is close to Stan’s, his hands both everywhere and nowhere. “Don’t cry. We haven’t heard the prognosis yet.”

“My dad died—” Stan says, and his voice breaks off as his forehead hits Kyle’s shoulder. At least he’s not sobbing. The rest goes unsaid: his dad died within a year, the cancer strong, reluctant to treatment. It’s in Stan’s blood, it’s in his  _body_. He has never hated his dad so much as he does in this moment. He has never loved Kyle so much as he does in this moment while Kyle pets his hair and tells him it’s going to be okay, somehow, even though that’s ridiculous. Stan is dizzy and sick from emotions and wants to lie down. Forever.

So he lies down while they discuss treatment options. So he lets Kyle drive and puts the seat all the way back, feeling the motion of the car on his back, staring at the ceiling. So he goes to bed as soon as he gets home.

When he wakes up Kyle is saying, “What about Clarissa?” and Stan groans, rubbing the heels of his hand into his eyes.

“Can you tell her?”

“Don’t you think you should be the one to?”

“Don’t you think you should shut up?” Stan rolls on his side and draws his shoulder up to his ear.

Kyle sighs.

When Kyle comes back from the phone call, his eyes red and his face smelling like soap and water, Stan has decided it’s not going to be that bad. “We’ll nip it in the bud,” he cheerfully tells Kyle, sitting up in bed with his hands together like he’s dictating a great plan. “I’m not my dad, you know, we caught it early, it’ll be great. I’ll live, like. Forever.”

The doctor had given him a year.


	5. Look Good For You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan/Kyle. Your first dick pic is a special moment.

They’ve been dating for two weeks. Kyle has seen Stan’s dick before–they’d always been unusually close–but never in an explicitly sexual context. Yet here he is, getting ready for his shift as a lifeguard at the only public pool in South Park, looking at a picture of Stan’s dick on his phone.

It’s not a good dick pic, objectively, though it’s a great dick. It’s Stan’s torso and a bit of his thighs in his bathroom mirror, which is disgusting, toothpaste stains and smudges on its surface. His dick is hard in the picture and it’s doing all sorts of things to Kyle, mainly making him sweaty and forget that he’s in the lifeguard’s locker room with his coworker, who happens to be Kenny.

“Whoa!” Kenny says, looking over Kyle’s shoulder.

“Kenny!” Kyle swirls around. Kenny is naked as well, though Kyle’s gotten used to that, because Kenny waits to dress out until the last possible moment. “This is private!”

“Dude, chill. I’ve seen Stan’s dick. We used to fuck, remember?”

“Don’t remind me,” Kyle groans. He texts back, nice ;) and puts his phone in the locker.

“It’s fine. He always called your name and cried about it afterwards. Sometimes, you know, we’d roleplay–”

“Please shut up.” Kyle pulls his hair in a ponytail and pushes the rest back with a headband.

“Just saying, Jesus.” Kenny pushes past Kyle and goes to get dressed.

Once again, Kyle groans. He resists the urge to grab his phone and gander at the dick pic for the next five hours, heading out to do his dumb job. He’ll be pissed if some kid has the audacity to drown today as he has the full intention of spending his shift planning the best way to surprise Stan with a blowjob at the end of the day.


	6. Six AM, Day After Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kenny and Wendy make a decision. Warnings for pregnancy and abortion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah i pretty much stole the plot and title from brick by ben folds five

On the day after Christmas, Kenny woke up with Wendy in his bed. Her hair was in his face; he shifted, ever so slightly as not to wake her, and thought about killing himself as the morning light fell across his face. Too bad he would not die and had long become accustomed to the pain of a bullet in the brains. Moaning as softly as possible he got out of bed, naked, and stretched, looking out the window. The snow outside was old and dirty and somebody had allowed their dog to shit just outside his window. Kenny sighed.

Not knowing how to dress for an occasion like this, Kenny threw on a sweater and jeans, sitting on the floor to pull on thick woolen socks. They were handmade, from Karen, the only present he’d gotten for Christmas from his family, and he appreciated them more than the comic books from Kyle or the box of vintage candy from Stan. He and Wendy did not give each other gifts.

Thinking of Wendy, he looked over at her. She was on her side, one of her arms hanging off the mattress, her fingers ghosting the floor. She slept with her mouth open and the blanket off her feet. Her hair was all on Kenny’s side, undone, they’d fallen asleep after sex. She was beautiful; Kenny ached as he went over to wake her up.

“Wen,” he whispered. When she did not respond, he shook her shoulder and said it more loudly.

She blinked her eyes open at him, her paper-white and paper-thin forehead crinkling just a bit. “Yeah?”

“Come on. Get up. Our appointment.”

It took a second until the realization hit her; she rolled over on her back, quiet. Kenny, kneeling on the floor beside her, picked her hand on and kissed the knuckles. She was so pale, a ghost in his arms.

“Give me a minute,” she said. Kenny watched the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed and tried not to let his eyes go lower. Tried not to think.

“‘Kay.” He kissed her knuckles again. “Do you want breakfast?”

“No.”

So Kenny sat there, his fingers running over each individual bump of Wendy’s hand, as she collected the strength. The smell of dog shit wafted through the window as the sun rose higher in the sky and Kenny tried not to think.

“I’m ready,” Wendy announced, at last.

She dressed in Kenny’s thickest winter parka, though it was sort of warm outside for winter, and the pants and shoes she’d worn to his house yesterday. Kenny put a hand on the small of her back as he led her down the stairs. They took her car but Kenny drove it, Wendy looking out the window, nothing on the radio. The sun broke over the horizon, the full strength of the day bearing down on them, and Kenny squinted through it.

The South Park Abortion Clinic parking lot was empty, of course it was, because who the fuck got an abortion the morning of the ay after Christmas? Wendy Testaburger, it seemed.

Kenny was not a religious man, though he sort of had to be, since he dealt with God and Satan on a regular basis. But as Wendy was in the clinic all alone, refusing to let Kenny cross the threshold, Kenny paced around the small, cold parking lot of the clinic and prayed. Prayed with all his might, kneeling on the sodden ground, hands clasped. Prayed and pleaded. He didn’t know what for, he just did, and when he was finished he walked down the street to the pawn shop and sold the dumb comics he’d gotten for Christmas so he could buy Wendy a bouquet of flowers from the florist next door. Knowing nothing about flowers, he selected the prettiest ones. Hyacinth and white roses.

“It’s rather early,” the man behind the counter said.

Kenny said nothing. He had spent more than he could afford.

By the time he had gotten back Wendy was waiting by the car. Kenny presented the flowers to her; she offered the smallest smile he’d ever seen; they got in the car and Kenny drove her home. Still there was nothing on the radio. Still Kenny squinted through the sunlight. Still Wendy, and the world itself, was still.

Nobody asked him or her where they’d been. Her parents were out of town and she had stayed behind. His just didn’t care and Karen was asleep.

Weeks went by. School resumed. The weather got colder and Wendy had not returned Kenny’s parka. She wore it every day, even though it was ugly, even though it made her look forty pounds heavier. Kenny took up a third job. She kept the flowers on the vase by her bedroom table long after they had died.

“We had to do it, you know,” Wendy said the next time they were alone in Kenny’s room. It was late at night, after a party, after a few drinks. She’d thrown up on Kenny’s front porch and Kenny had put her to bed before going out into the dark, cold night to clean it up. Now she was awake, ready to talk, and Kenny, sober, ready to listen.

“You don’t have to convince me,” he said. He pulled her tighter. She was so thin, so pale, so cold. He tucked her head under his chin.

“I feel guilty.”

Kenny let a sigh build and then subside in his chest. “We had no choice.”

“I wonder what it would’ve been like.”

“We’re seventeen.”

“Boy or girl.”

“You don’t have a job. I’m poor. We live with our parents.”

“I know.” Wendy squeezed her arms around Kenny. “No, I know, for sure. I just–”

“I know.”

“Nobody else does.”

“They don’t have to.”

“We’re alone together.”

“Like always.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

But they could not sleep. She shifted against him, he against her, and it was drafty in his room and too cold even with all the blankets in his house piled on top of him.

Finally, he whispered to her, “Have I ever told you about how I can’t die?”

“What?”

“I can’t die. Well, I do, but I always come back to life. I’ve been to Heaven. I’ve been to Hell. There are no aborted babies in either. They don’t have souls until they’re able to live outside the womb, in theory.”

“In theory?”

“Stillborns.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Well.”

“As far as we’re concerned, we removed a tumor. Not a human being.”

“Then why do I still feel so sad?”

Kenny closed his eyes. Wendy’s breath was steady against his skin. He wondered if she would remember this in the morning. “Do you regret it?”

Wendy was quiet for a moment. “No,” she said. “I’m just sad that it had to happen.”

“Well. Now we move on.”

And that was that.


	7. A Small Four-Leaf Clover Tattoo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan/Kyle roommates AU.

9:00 AM. That is the time that roommate assignments come out; that is the time that Kyle has memorized. Like with every other college milestone from acceptance to registration, Kyle sits in front of his computer with his feet up on the desk and a piece of skin from his thumb in between his teeth at 8:59, refreshing frantically. The little numbers in the corner of his screen turn over, and—

Stan Marsh.

Kyle copies and pastes his name and goes immediately to Facebook. The profile picture is unreadable—a back shot off a mountain, the focus on the landscape. _Either pretentious or really into hiking_. Lives in Colorado; okay, really into hiking. Not that many friends—Kyle clicks add friend and feels almost like he’s doing the guy a favor. Into the about section—it doesn’t specify who he’s attracted to or what religion he is, maybe that’ll change after he’s accepted the friend request. His timeline is private.

Into photos. And—oh, fuck. He is hot. There’s pictures of him hanging out with a pretty girl and a scruffy blonde guy; Stan is tall and broad, dark hair and blue eyes, his skin’s a little pocked up but otherwise his features are perfect. Kyle moans and runs his hands through his hair.

* * *

Stan is nervous on the first day of college for several understandable reasons. He’s never really been away from home that much; he’s a bit of a momma’s boy; the university is huge; but most annoyingly yet most persistently of all, he’s afraid to meet his roommate. Kyle Broff-loff-ski, as he had taught Stan to pronounce his last name over several late-night Facebook chats and eventual phone calls. Kyle had been the first to establish a connection with a long message introducing himself and providing background; scared shitless, Stan’d put off responding for a week, which put them off to a rocky start. They became fast friends, though, bonding over similar values, morals and favorite television shows, and now they’re meeting for the first time.

Stan’s father insists on carrying most of Stan’s stuff, Stan left with a backpack on his back and a plastic sleeve containing his new comforter, while his mom rubs his shoulder and dabs at her eyes. He’s the second kid off to college but he’d always been the favorite, the most likely to succeed; Shelley’s already dropped out and is making a try at being a tattoo artist. She sucks, but Stan has a small, sketchy drawing a four-leaf clover high on his rib cage, nearly under his armpit. _For good luck, little bro_ , she had said, after slapping it when she was done. Stan hasn’t told Kyle that particular story.

The Marsh family takes the elevator to the fourth floor, on which Stan is staying, and locate Stan’s room. The door is propped open. Kyle has already claimed the bed closest to the door, but that’s okay, Stan would prefer the one by the window, anyway. Kyle himself is nowhere to be seen.

“Sucks the other guy got here first,” Randy says, as if his road rage is not the reason for their delay.

“It’s alright,” Stan says, not really hearing what he’s saying. “It looks like the closet is over there and the desk is right here.”

Stan’s parents leave before Kyle comes back from wherever he’s been. They share a closet; Stan can see the pressed dress shirt and fussy loafers on a home-brought shoe rack, which reconfirms his idea of Kyle. Stan is sitting on his bed and literally twiddling his thumbs, stewing in his own anxiety about upcoming orientations and classes, when Kyle walks through the door.

“Hello,” Kyle says. He waves.

Stan jumps up. “Hey!” He’s a hugger; he goes in for one; Kyle reciprocates; Kyle smells good. There were not that many pictures of Kyle on Facebook; Stan understands why when he sees him in real life. Kyle isn’t ugly—he’s the opposite, actually, he’s just severe. As if he was cut from stone, all angles and catching light. Not something that photographs well, but something that vibrates beneath Stan’s fingers as they hug, energy swirling between them and confirming their connection.

 _Ah, fuck_ , Stan thinks as they separate and he starts to find constellations in the small specks of gold in Kyle’s green eyes, _this is going to be a very, very long first year._

* * *

They don’t share any classes, though they do share interests. They go to orientations and dinners together and suddenly they’re inseparable; Kyle is cagey and weird around new people, wanting to cling to Stan’s familiarity, and Stan revels in this himself, anxious and feeling useful and protective when Kyle literally grabs at Stan’s arm. When they turn in for the night it feels wrong, like they should be getting into bed together, but neither of one them is quite able to voice this.

It doesn’t take too long, though; the first Friday night they get trashed in their dorm and fuck. They cry; there’s bad music playing on the radio; the beds are awkwardly small and so they consummate a budding relationship on the floor. But it’s perfect.


End file.
